Yesterday some new visitors arrived in Iceland, juvenile European catfish (Silurus glanis), marking the first time this species has been brought to our shores.  The 5000 catfish were received to quarantine tanks at the state-of-the-art Marine Aquaculture Research Station of Matís ohf. as part of the European research project SilGen – Innovative approaches for mass production.

Claudia Prats Llorens is the MSc student from the Erasmus IMBRSea program, who will carry out her research project on these juvenile catfish to understand and optimise the phosphorous intake to improve catfish aquaculture.  Claudia is co-supervised by Dr. Wolfgang Koppe of Matís ohf and by Dr. Alexandra Leeper at the Iceland Ocean Cluster.

The Iceland ocean cluster is excited to be involved in a research project that supports the potential for culturing new types of species in land-based aquaculture systems in Iceland and to be working closely with the aquaculture expertise at Matís ohf.